


BTVS essay about Vengeance, Anya, Buffy and Angel -  2003

by shadowkat67



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Essays, Meta, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-07-13
Updated: 2009-07-13
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:28:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22396327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadowkat67/pseuds/shadowkat67





	BTVS essay about Vengeance, Anya, Buffy and Angel -  2003

"I think this is going to be a very big year for vengeance."(Anya in Restless, Btvs Season 4)

Truer words were never spoken, particularly for 2001 and 2002 and specifically in my life. But enough about me - vengeance is an apt and recurring theme in Btvs. Apt because as much as we hate to admit, we live in a vengeful society. A vengeful, unforgiving, judgmental and often self-righteous society. If you don't believe me just turn on the nightly news or CNN or Crossfire -and there it is in living color. We as a society don't appear to know how to forgive others or ourselves. And until we figure it out, we're doomed.

"You're weak. Everybody is. Everybody fails." (Buffy forgiving Angel in Amends, Season 3 Btvs).

"Not a vengeance hobby, no! It's dangerous. People can't do anything they want. Society has rules, and borders, and an end zone. It doesn't matter if-" (Xander explaining to Anya why vengeance is bad in Restless)

"Maybe the way to start forgiving yourself is by starting to forgive him." (Lorne to Angel regarding Wesley after Wesley kidnapped Angel's son to protect him from Angel. Season 3 Ats)

"Vengeance is never sated, buffy. Hatred is a cycle." (Giles in Pangs Season 4 Btvs)

The most forgiving character in the Buffyverse is Buffy. That is why she remains my hero. This girl can forgive a soulless demon, who has tried repeatedly to kill her, long enough to let him help her save the universe (see Intervention - The Gift Season 5 Btvs.) I think it is safe to say that this twenty-one year old girl has a greater capacity for forgiveness than most of the audience watching her. And that people, is ironic. She certainly has a greater capacity for it than her friends, neither Xander nor Willow have a clue how to forgive themselves or anyone else who hurts them - they hurt back. (See Something Blue and Wild at Heart for Willow, Bewitched Bothered & Bewildered for Xander) That's the easy path - to hurt back. Believe me, I know. But it never ever solves anything, as we are about to find out on both Angel and Btvs again this year.

Angel is ahead of the game. In Angel, we've been introduced to a righteous vampire hunter from the 12th century who has traveled through time to avenge himself on Angel, who massacred his entire family. The character of Holtz reminds me a great deal of John Wayne's character Ethan in the old John Ford film the Searchers. In this film, the demons are the Apache (native Americans) who have massacred Ethan's family and taken his niece. With his nephew, Ethan goes on a quest, a long five-year quest, to find the girl and kill her Apache captors. By the end of the movie, you can no longer tell the difference between Ethan and the Apaches' he hates. Vengeance has consumed him. When he reaches the girl, played by a young Natalie Wood, he has decided to kill her, because she has become tainted by the Apache and in his mind is no longer human. He has demonized her. If I remember the ending, it has been awhile since I've seen the film, his nephew prevents Ethan from killing her. Ethan's crusade did not resurrect any of his loved ones all it did was consume him, make him worse than the enemy he hated. The same thing has happened to Holtz in Angel this year, a once righteous man has become as evil as the demons he hunts. Perhaps more so. This year we've seen him sell his soul to a demon, burn down Lorne's club, coerce Justine into slashing Wesley's throat, and take Angel's child into a hell dimension.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer has dealt with the theme of vengeance repeatedly over the years. As far back as Season 2, Passion - Giles tried to kill Angel because of Jenny's death (Angelus had just murdered Jenny and left her in Giles bed as a gift.) Xander of course was completely behind Giles' actions : "And if Giles wants to go after the, uh, (looks up at Buffy) fiend that murdered his girlfriend, I say, 'Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!'" But our heroine, she of calm head, is worried and goes off to save Giles. As she wisely states: "There's only one thing wrong with Giles' little revenge scenario. It's gonna get him killed." She's said this repeatedly over the years - the most recent to Willow in Tough Love. Willow also ignores her and goes after Glory with black magic, an act that may have taken Willow down a road she wouldn't have traveled otherwise. There's an old wiccan saying - the evil you send out comes back to you three fold, doesn't really matter whether it's justified.

Let's stop briefly to catch our breaths, having some trouble doing that today, feeling very vengeful, and reexamine the difference between self-defense and vengeance. If someone is attacking you or you know they're plotting your demise - then yes, you ought to take action to stop them. Example - the US's current campaign against terrorism or Buffy's slaying of demons/Angelus. But if someone did something to hurt you and it was not to destroy you or they weren't planning your demise - example my silly boss or Wesley's taking of Connor to protect him or Spike and Anya sleeping together, then taking action against them is not only uncalled for, but self-destructive. We have to watch how far we take vengeance or like Angel's Holtz, it will consume us. Sometimes forgiveness is as necessary for the injured party as it is for the guilty one. Possibly more so. And there is nothing harder in this world than forgiveness. I'm not sure I can ever forgive my boss for being the backstabbing bastard that he is…but we will see. Can Anya forgive Xander for being Captain Fear? Can Xander forgive Anya for lashing out at him in the only way she knows how? Can Spike forgive Buffy for not returning his love? Can Buffy forgive Spike for being a demon lashing out at her in the only way he knows how? Do we, the audience have the right to judge fictional characters on behaviors that we ourselves could be capable of under similar situations? What's that saying - People in Glass Houses Should Not Through Stones?? (And if you think you don't live in a glass house, look again. I'm sure you can find a window somewhere.)

Revenge may get you killed. It could get you fired. It may possibly destroy your life. It has made a mess of our world.

When Anya was first introduced in Season 3's the Wish - it was as a vengeance demon. She represented the pain and hurt that Cordelia felt when she found Xander and Willow smooching in the old Factory. It is ironic that Anya, who was called by Cordelia to scorn Xander, inadvertently enacts her vengeance against Xander by sleeping with Spike. Nice karma there. And Xander, nice as he is, does deserve a bit of karmic revenge. He has gone down the road of vengeance himself upon occasion and has learned it never turns out well. Here's a scene from Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered where Xander blackmails Amy into helping him conjure a nasty love spell to torment Cordelia:

> Xander: (glares back) Blackmail is such an ugly word.  
>  Amy: I didn't say blackmail.  
>  Xander: Yeah, but I'm about to blackmail you, so I thought I'd bring it up.  
>  Amy: (folds her arms) What do you want?  
>  Xander: (chuckles) What do I want? I want some respect around here. I  
>  want, for *once*, to come out ahead. I want the Hellmouth to be working  
>  for me. You and me, Amy... (looks back at Cordelia sitting with Harmony  
>  now) we're gonna cast a little spell.  
>  Amy: A love spell?  
>  Xander: Yeah. You know, just the basic can't eat, can't sleep, can't  
>  breathe anything but little old moi. (edited for length) The point is I want her to want me. Desperately. So I can break up with *her* and subject her to the same hell she's been puttin' *me* through.  
>  Amy: (turns and steps away) Oh, I don't know, Xander. (turns back)  
>  Intent has to be pure with love spells.  
>  Xander: Right. I intend revenge. Pure as the driven snow. Now, are you  
>  gonna play, or do we need to have another chat about invisible homework?

And you all thought that Xander was pure as the driven snow? Please. Of course he finds out that revenge spells don't always work out as we intend them to. He gets the worst end of the stick. All the women come after him and try to tear him apart limb by limb when he doesn't appreciate their attentions. Also he nearly devastates poor Willow who had always had a crush on him. That's the thing about karma - it comes back and kicks you in the butt. Xander does eventually manage to break poor Cordy's heart by stealing smoochies with Willow over the course of four episodes and finally getting caught. This round Cordelia unwittingly curses Xander and ends up signing her own death warrant. In The Wish, Anya grants Cordy's wish that Buffy never came to Sunnydale, which creates an incredibly dark Alternate Universe where Xander and Willow are the resident Big Bads and kill Cordy. Luckily for Cordelia, Giles comes to the rescue and destroys Anya's power center, effectively undoing the wish.

Anya knows quite a bit about vengeance. In fact both Anya and Spike do, being demons, vengeance comes naturally to them - because well it causes chaos and disrupts the world and is evil. Anya felt powerful as a vengeance demon - when people hurt her or hurt others - she eviscerated them. As D'Hoffryn, her old boss states: "When you were a vengeance demon, you were powerful, at the top of your game. You crushed men like him." (Hell's Bells, Season 6 Btvs.) Vengeance, Anya believes is a powerful and inevitable thing. A view she and Spike agree on, in Where the Wild Things Are (Season 4, Btvs.):

> SPIKE: It's a terrible thing, love is. I been there myself. (Pause) It ended badly.  
>  ANYA: Of course it did. It always does. Seen a thousand relationships. First there's the nothing left but the vengeance. That's how it works. (Spike smiles, leans in really close.)  
>  SPIKE: You and I ... should just go do the vengeance. Both of us! You eviscerate Xander, and I'll stake Dru. Like a project.

Our poor demons, can't help but feel sorry for them, they've had the ill luck of falling for Buffy and Xander, two terribly insecure twenty-somethings. Spike and Anya would have been better off taking up with each other. But they didn't, because as Spike has stated more than once, love is a funny thing and it's not about brains. Also I believe the Powers That Be have a wicked sense of humor. So what do you do when there's as Anya so succinctly sings in OMWF: "There's wedding and betrayle and I know there'll come a time when I'll want to run and hide?"

Vengeance is the worst possible answer. It's what Kurtz did long ago in Apocalypse Now. In the film by Francis Ford Coppola, Willard goes into the jungles to locate and kill Col. Kurtz, who had ventured into the jungles years before to revenge the deaths of his men. The vengeance began to take over, until Kurtz was literally hollowed out by it and nothing remained but the need for vengeance. It was never over. And this is important, it did not bring back his men. This reminds me of the debate for the Death Penalty that I witnessed on the Kansas State Senate Floor in 1994. The debate was concerning a proposal to re-enact the death penalty in the state of Kansas after it had been discarded fifty years before. Without exception, every argument was about retribution. People quoted from the Old Testament about an "eye for an eye". The action passed. Apparently we like to retribution - we like vengeance. It makes us feel better. As a friend of mine stated at the time: Wouldn't you want the state to kill me if I raped your mother and killed your family? Well yeah, but it wouldn't bring them back and it wouldn't erase the pain. If anything it would make it worse, because then I'd have your death and your family's pain on my conscience.

Back to Btvs. In Season 4, the episode Pangs discusses forgiveness and vengeance with a dash of wit. In this episode, the angry spirit of a Chumash Indian is revived by a University construction project. The spirit proceeds to enact vengeance on the Scooby Gang. In the episode, the gang discusses the justification of vengeance and how to deal with it. Willow takes the Indians point of view, stating how they are justified and that we treated them horribly. Xander believes vengeance is a bad thing and all vengeance demons should be killed, particularly the one who gave him syphillus. Giles takes the stance that you need to get rid of the menace before it kills you. It's too late to apologize and feeling all guilty about it isn't going to get you anywhere. Giles also states how vengeance just builds on itself, becoming a vicious cycle of hate. The only thing that can break it - is forgiveness. Enter Spike, their mortal enemy requesting help. In exchange, he promises to provide information. It is an interesting scene - because outside we have the nasty vengeance spirit, inside the admittance of a former enemy into the group. They tie Spike up, but they also grant him shelter, food, and some sort of protection. In a sense the SG manage to do what the Indian spirits cannot, forgive a former enemy, at least partially. They are eventually rewarded for this act - Spike helps them in Season 5 defeat Glory, aids in the patrolling of Sunnydale while Buffy is dead, saves Buffy in OMWF, and saves Xander in OAFA and Normal Again. If they hadn't allowed Spike in, would they have succeeded in defeating Glory? Would Buffy have imploded? Forgiveness can have some astonishing results.

How about Angel? If Angel had not allowed Darla back into his life, not forgiven her, would he have had any time with his son? Connor? If Wesley and the Fang Gang hadn't forgiven Angel for firing them and acting like a slease, would they have survived the Alternate Universe and found Fred? If Buffy hadn't forgiven Angel for losing his soul, would there even be an Angel? There can only be redemption if we have forgiveness. Forgiveness is a central ingredient to Christianity. The religion is founded on it. The story goes - that Jesus Christ died in order to forgive the sins of humanity. By his forgiveness, we are saved. But forgiveness isn't an easy thing. The biggest problem with it, is sometimes you are forced to forgive someone who has absolutely no "pangs". No guilt. No remorse. Here's that pivotal scene from Pangs regarding vengeance:

> Willow : There are 2 sides to it.  
>  Xander : Slaying him? The representative from syphilis votes yea.  
>  Willow : It's not that simple.  
>  Xander : He's a vengeance demon. You don't talk to vengeance demons. You kill them.  
>  Anya : (Drawing back.) I didn't know you felt that way.  
>  Xander : (Totally confused.) What?  
>  Willow : Anyway, he's a spirit, not a demon.  
>  Giles : Yes, and we've never faced this sort of spirit before. We really don't know what will kill it.  
>  Willow : Again with the killing.  
>  Giles : Figuratively speaking. Or bind it or whatever. Yes, willow, we all appreciate your perspective.  
>  Anya : Sometimes vengeance is justified.  
>  Xander : You know that I didn't mean you.  
>  Willow : I don't think anyone appreciates the truth of the situation.  
>  Giles : Oh, I think we do. Hus won't stop. Vengeance is never sated, buffy. Hatred is a cycle. All he will do is kill.  
>  There's a knock at the door. Buffy goes to answer it and Spike is standing there, cowering below a blanket. Smoke rises as he's being seared by the indirect sun.  
>  Spike : Help me. (Buffy shoves him back and he goes tumbling.) Ohh! What part of help me do you not understand?

Sorry for the length of the quote but I think it expresses our characters views on vengeance perfectly. Xander reacts with himself and his needs in mind. Anya and Willow take the Indians side. And Giles sees it from a practical perspective. It's Buffy who remains on the fence. But my favorite part is Spike. Spike who fits Giles' definition of a soulless killing machine, appears harmless and in desperate need of help. Evil with a twist. Poor Buffy, Evil isn't just Evil any more, it's coming in shades of gray. As she states she preferred her evil: "You know, "straight up, black hat, "Tied to the train tracks, soon my electro-ray will destroy metropolis" bad. Not all mixed up with guilt and the destruction of an indigenous culture." But evil isn't like that folks. It's insidious. Sometimes it comes in the form of an evil boss who upsets you so badly you spend all day writing an essay on Buffy instead of doing work. I've seen evil. Used to see if every day when I was working on the Kansas Defender Project. Went up to Leavenworth Penitentiary, walked into what looked like an airport lounge and counseled unreformed unrepentant murderers, rapists and robbers. And want to know what I discovered? What my advisor kept trying to tell me, over and over again: "There but for the grace of god, go I." Life isn't simple. The good guys don't wear white hats like in the old 1950's westerns and the bad guys don't wear black ones. Sometimes things are just a tad more convoluted.

Anya - poor dear Anya, my heart goes out to her. She really tried to make this mortal coil thing work. She was marrying her best friend, had gotten a job, was starting a life. What she didn't count on was her best friend was a dope. Okay maybe not a dope, but Xander should have discussed his fears with Anya, let her know what was going on. Didn't he realize what he was dealing with? And what about Spike? Yeah, I know, Evil. ME is determined to reiterate this thesis, even if they lose fifty percent of their audience in the process. But let's give Evil (Spike) it's due, evil has been bending over backwards lately to be good. He's fought alongside the SG, sacrificed his life for the SG (on more than one occasion, Intervention - let Glory torture him to death before revealing the key, almost got killed by Doc in Weight of the World and The Gift, saved Dawn from Pirates in Bargaining, saved Buffy in OMWF, saved Xander and almost got skewered in Older and Far Away, saved Xander and almost got spiked in Normal Again, helped Tara in Family, stayed around all summer while Buffy was dead and buried helping the SG and taking care of Dawn.) but apparently that's not enough. The Powers That Be require something a lot greater than that. Not sure what. Does he have to ask for Forgiveness to obtain it? Does he have to do something unrelated to Buffy? Does he have to actively seek to be good for no other reason than he wants to be? Again I am reminded of Alex in A Clockwork Orange - who in the 21st Chapter of Burgess' book determines that there is more worth in creation than destruction. And he is more than a windup toy for God or the Devil. I hope that Spike and Anya are too. Heck I hope the same thing about us.  
  



End file.
